Motivational Quotes

Reason

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

- Havel, Vaclav

Best Quotes about Reason

Our passion and principles are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.

Sterne, Laurence

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.

William Shakespeare

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

Wesley, John

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

10.

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.

Fromm, Erich

11.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Shaw, George Bernard

12.

Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.

Jerrold, Douglas William

13.

O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself.

Aragon, Louis

14.

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

15.

The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.

Connolly, Cyril

16.

Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.

Dryden, John

17.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

Addison, Joseph

18.

A man always has two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason and the real reason.

Morgan, John Pierpont

19.

Write on my gravestone: Infidel, Traitor.--infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

Phillips, Wendell

20.

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

Hegel, Georg

21.

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

22.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Voltaire

23.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

24.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Swift, Jonathan

25.

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.

Bronte, Charlotte

26.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

Sophocles

27.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

28.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Bacon, Roger

29.

Man always has two reasons for the things he does; the logical one and the real one.

30.

As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.

Beecher, Catharine Esther

31.

Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards.

Petersen, Soren F.

32.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

33.

Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.

Warburton, William

34.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

Frost, Robert

35.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

White, William Allen

36.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Karl Marx

37.

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

38.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

39.

There is something peculiarly sinister and insidious in even a charge of disloyalty. Such a charge all too frequently places a strain on the reputation of an individual which is indelible and lasting, regardless of the complete innocence later proved.

O'Brian, John Lord

40.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unus'd.

William Shakespeare

41.

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Allen, Woody

42.

Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.

Abbagnano, Nicola

43.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

44.

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Browne, Sir Thomas

46.

There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.

Aragon, Louis

47.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

48.

I got fame and fortune, and I lost my sense of reasoning.

Richard, Little

49.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Chesterfield, Lord

50.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Wilde, Oscar